126 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SONG-BIRDS. 



song in this country (except in the remote forest soli- 

 tudes) during the richest moment of the spring, say 

 from the 1st to the 20th of May, and at times till 

 near midsummer ; moreover, more bird- voices join 

 in it, as I shall point out, than in Britain ; but it is 

 probably more fitful and intermittent, more confined 

 to certain hours of the day, and probably proceeds 

 from throats less loud and vivacious than that with 

 which our distinguished critic was familiar. The ear 

 hears best and easiest what it has heard before. 

 Properly to apprehend and appreciate bird-songs, es- 

 pecially to disentangle them from the confused mur- 

 mur of nature, requires more or less familiarity with 

 them. If the Duke had passed a season with us in 

 some one place in the country, in New York or New 

 England, he would probably have modified his views 

 about the silence of our birds. 



One season, early in May, I discovered an English 

 sky-lark in full song above a broad, low meadow in 

 the midst of a landscape that possessed features at- 

 tractive to a great variety of our birds. Every morn- 

 ing for many days I used to go and sit on the brow 

 of a low hill that commanded the field, or else upon 

 a gentle swell in the midst of the meadow itself, and 

 listen to catch the song of the lark. The maze and 

 tangle of bird-voices and bird-choruses through which 

 my ear groped its way searching for the new song 

 can be imagined when I say that within hearing 

 there were from fifteen to twenty different kinds of 

 songsters, all more or less in full tune. If their 



